Leave Your Hearts at Home!

For the longest time I have heard this term "Leave your brains at home" used to describe a movie. After hearing it for such a long time I have come to see a pattern in the movies for which people use this term. But what do people really mean. What does leave your brain at home mean. I believe what they mean is not to question blatant holes in the plot? or unrealistic characters? or silly looking locations? or broadly speaking just don't ask any questions.

Om Shanti Om was one film that falls under this category. It is a LYBH film according to a lot of people. It started alright, silly humor, some of it really funny and I thought this was one of those films which are meant to be stupid all over. But then mid way it became serious and expected me to start caring about the characters which were originally set up for a spoof. So if someone dies in a spoof the audience tries to laugh at that too, but this was not funny. Then a bunch of other things happen which are sad but not funny and eventually you realise that these guys are serious about it. So coming back to my point, half way through the film i had started finding flaws in the characters, locations, dialogues and pretty much everything with the film. Some other films were Singh is Kinng, Welcome, a lot of David Dhawan stuff back in the 90s. But does this mean that these "flaws" that we point out in a film do not exist in other films we adore. Actually they are all over the place, its just that we don't notice them because the director was successful in keeping us focused on what he wants us to focus on. According to the definition above of a LYBH a lot of classics should be categorized here. Have you ever heard anyone asking you to leave your brain at home when they talk about say Andaz Apna Apna. No you don't; they all say "its awesome", "its a cult" etc. This is because the humor keeps us engaged, same goes for Padosan, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. There are "flaws" in the basic plots of these films if you compare them to reality but we never feel the need to leave our brains at home. I am not even considering GolMaal, Chupke Chupke, Lage Raho Munnabhai because you might argue that they clearly don't fall under this category and are bad examples. But if you really think about it, they have flaws too, maybe not as obvious but they are there. Is it really practical for a guy to pull off what Amol Palekar did in GolMaal, can you imagine what Aneez Bazmee would have done to the same story, I cringe. But you buy it, this is because of the treatment, because how you care about the character. Do you really think what happens in the Munnabhai films is possible, the protagonist himself is an unreal character, a lovable bhai. They conveniently don't show the dirty side of what he does for a living for him to stay lovable. But what works for GolMaal, Munnbhai is that people connect to their protagonist, the viewers care when he has a problem and feel happy when he wins, which is the biggest victory of a writer or a director in my opinion.

Most people don't go to a movie to ask questions or to analyze it, they just want to have a good time. I do analyze films but never when am watching it for the first time, i consciously forget about film making and try to have a good time and in fact give the director a chance by trying hard to feel what he/she is trying to convey. A film might be from any genre, but one thing every film needs to do is engage the viewer in any which way. If the film does that, you don't tend to analyze the locations, characters, flaws in the plot etc, because you are engaged in the characters life, his/her predicament, happiness, or by the film's humor or simply its visuals. So whenever you feel like too many things in the film are not right while watching it, its probably because the director has failed to engage you, obviously this assuming that you were diligently paying attention to the film.

But the films which get tagged this certainly have something in them, otherwise why would someone feel the need to defend it, its gotta have entertained the person at some level. So OSO, Welcome, SIK have all succeeded in entertaining some people at some times during the films. Also they were packaged brilliantly and were a marketing success. These films would have failed miserably in the 70s as then films had to run for 20 weeks to be called a hit. Unfortunately today the first weekend is enough. Ne ways, coming back to the most important thing missing in these films, it is the connection with the audience. Its one thing to give ppl some giggles and another thing to make them laugh so much that they bring the film home into their lives and keep it there forever as a part of fond memories. Also such films consistently fail to make you relate to the protagonist. How much did we care if Akshay Kumar gets the girl, or brings the don back to the village in SIK or if SRK really got his revenge in OSO (were the directors even trying, he he). As opposed to that, we still remember Nasseruddin Shah and Ravi baswani's earnest fight for justice in JBDY or Amol Palekar's struggle to keep his job in Golmaal. So really speaking the way you would enjoy LYBH films is to not expect to have a great time but just about OK time, expect to be a little bored and wait for a few laughs, expect forgettable characters who don't connect with you, in short leave your hearts at home.